The Interview

I met Lydia on the patio of a coffee shop known as "CuBrew" that sits further into the center of the town.  She had showered and changed clothes, I noticed, and looked significantly less haggard.  She admitted that she actually got off at two, but needed some time to get shut-eye before she could come here.  Fair enough. I bought us each a coffee, as a thanks for coming to meet with me, and got my notepad out as she lit a cigarette.  I started by asking her a simple question.

"What happened when you found the body?"

She instantly tensed up.

"I was just walking down the trail, as I do every night, and I heard a splash... like something had been thrown in the water.  I ran down to the shore to see it washing up."

The answer didn't make sense to me.

"And you didn't see anyone toss her into the water?  Just heard a splash?"

She looked nervous. "Yes."

I figured she was lying, so I didn't feel too bad about offering one of my own.  "The police told me that she had been in the water for days.  What aren't you telling me?"

Lydia was quiet for a long time.  I thought she was going to get up and leave, but she didn't.

"You won't believe me. I'll look crazy."

I sighed and shook my head.  "Lydia, I'm here to hear what you have to say.  Whatever that is."

"I saw a building in the woods.  It shouldn't have been there."

"A building?"  I leaned in, intrigued.

"It was like... like a hotel or something.  It was in good condition, and the lights were on inside.  There was a chain-link fence around it.  But I didn't see anyone around."

"Did you go in?"

"I tried.  I walked over to it and knocked on the doors.  It was quiet, and nobody responded, so I tried to open them but they were locked tight.  I had a feeling... like I was trespassing.  But I couldn't just walk away.  I tried to go up a fire escape, and found that the door was unlocked."

She stopped talking and took a drag on her cigarette.

"It opened, and swung shut behind me.  The inside was... well, it was like an apartment complex.  It reminded me of the senior-living place my parents live in.  But there was nobody around.  Until I turned around to leave."

"Go on."  I was vigorously noting down everything she said, my coffee forgotten entirely.  This was exactly what people would want to read about, and the weirdness hadn't sunk in yet.

"It was that girl.  The dead one.  She was standing there, in the hallway.  She ran over to me and just said 'help me', and then started to fall.  I grabbed her, and then I was holding her, on the beach.  She was dead, and looked like she had been for a bit of time."

"Jesus Christ."

"Yeah.  You see why I wanted to keep this to myself.  I don't want anyone thinking that I did this."

She flicked the ashes off of her now-finished cigarette and dropped the butt to the sidewalk, rubbing her heel over it.

Her statement had given me a question.  "Are you okay with me publishing this on the blog?"

She was reluctant, but we eventually worked out a deal.  The details of that deal will be in the next post, because I'd like to focus on the interview here.  I asked her why she thought the police were hiding the murder and she said she wasn't sure.  She said that when she went into the station yesterday to ask about the case that the investigators looked confused.  She talked to the detective she'd spoken with initially and he claimed to not recognize her.

"Either that officer's been to acting classes or he really didn't remember me."

The conversation slowed around here and we exchanged information.  As we finished our coffees (and Lydia finished a second, and third, cigarette), she mentioned something else that I found interesting.

She told me that she's been having these dreams lately.  She knows she's dreaming every time but can't wake herself up, no matter what.  In each dream, she's running through the woods at night while a man chases her.  She doesn't see him but she knows it's a man, she says.  She also knows that he wants to kill her. She runs through Dexter's Park and no matter how far she runs, she can't find the way out anywhere.  Eventually she tires, or trips, or gives up, and the man approaches.  She can never remember his appearance.  He reaches out, knife in hand, and just as he moves to stab her, she wakes up.

Jesus Christ indeed.

I'm not sure where to take my investigation from here. I'm curious why the police don't seem to remember Lydia, and I'm very curious about this mirage she saw in the woods.  I noticed I've gained a few pageviews since my last posts; in case anyone reading is from out of town, I think I'm going to link to more information about the town itself in a future post.  Just so readers can have a fuller context and understanding of what I'm writing about.  If anyone out there has any thoughts or advice for where to take this investigation, I'd love to hear them.

But before anything else, I need to make a post regarding the deal I made with Lydia.  I just need to work up the nerve first.  To be honest, that's why I've been MIA the past couple of days. 

-Callie